Cooking with Google

Today, my friend Catherine and I wanted to make banana bread. I'm not really sure why we decided this was necessary, but it was and it needed to be done. We only had one short class for Amboise preparation this morning, so we had time to devote our entire day to this project.
From the start, our cooking was improvised. We did not have ripe bananas, we both believe bananas just don't ripen here, they always look green. But we bought them anyway along with some eggs and chocolate to put in the bread.
I walked into a bookstore, the eggs in my shopping bag, and dropped the bag onto the ground the second I walked in the door. The eggs cracked. There was yolk everywhere. In case anyone was wondering, I assured them of my foreigner status. I cleaned up my mess, as the employees looked on (no really, don't offer to help, please just keep staring). Catherine and I finally wandered home around 2 PM to make the bread. We waited until her "mom" left the kitchen so she would not see the mess that was about to ensue. My job was to cut up the chocolate bar, with a knife, to make little chocolate chips. Catherine put butter in the microwave to melt it. At my table, rest assured, chocolate was EVERYWHERE. We ran into our first problem when we realized the house had no vanilla. We searched high and low, but there was no vanilla. We decided to google the importance of this ingredient. Well, google informed us it was an important ingredient and pretty much a staple in every kitchen. Well guess what google, you are wrong. Vanilla is not a staple in french households. We could have used maple syrup, fat chance that was just lying around, or brandy. But neither of us liked the idea of brandy, so we decided to skip that step. Our second problem occurred when we realized there was no baking soda. I didn't even hesitate as I turned the computer on to again google the importance of this this ingredient as well. There, in black and white, it read, "Yes, baking soda is always necessary." Well, lets get creative Google, use your imagination. Therefore, we found yeast and used just a slight pinch of that in our wonderful banana bread. The third problem arose when I tried to pour flour from the container, into my measuring cup. The flour made it in the cup! As well as all over the surrounding counter.
We threw in a pinch of salt, and the chocolate chips and used little individual muffin type tins to make individual breads (we thought this would be cute for our bus ride :) ) Our next problem reared its head when we realized that french ovens are TINY. We somehow stuffed two pans in there, leaving the last one out.
As we waited patiently for our bread to bake, we searched french songs on youtube. However, our bread took less time than previously thought to cook, and we had about 18 slightly burnt cakes on our hands. We tried desperately to get rid of the burnt parts. We watched our next batch VERY closely, timing them by the minute... and they were a success!
It was an adventure, but I will say this: I will not return home without extensive knowledge on baking!

And no google, baking soda and vanilla are not necessary... our bread is AWESOME!